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A Mature Profession?

Not again. That misleading petition, forwarded along by many colleagues and even by schools, the AAAOM, and the NCCAOM, is making the rounds again. You know, the whitehouse.gov petition that we should all sign to have acupuncturists designated covered health care providers? Well, just as it was last time around, it’s b.s. It doesn’t matter how many signatures we get, the Executive Branch does not determine who is a covered provider under the Social Security Act.

It would be nice if I could tell you the process we’d have to go through to make acupuncture a covered service. I can tell you that finding the information and understanding it isn’t easy, but that my efforts continue! (Of course, I’ll share what I learn.) But why should I be the one doing this work? Surely, one of the national organizations has figured it out. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that they’d be a resource, providing information so that we knew what we as a profession needed to do to effect change, that, as practitioners we understood what would happen after a “victory” in this battle, that they’d have some ideas about the implications of a win?

Well, I guess, if you’ve been around a while you wouldn’t think that. And clearly you shouldn’t. So far, at least to the eyes of an acupuncturist more involved than most, the total input of our national organizations has been to further distribute a misleading petition, encouraging more wasted qi, and doing nothing to educate or inform the profession.

If it is correct that part of this process is to be determined to be a “mature profession” by BLS, as another colleague reports, then this petition, and the response to it by our national organizations, works against us.

2 thoughts on “A Mature Profession?”

Here is the response from CMS — “Your inquiry was received in the ProviderFeedback mailbox. The purpose of the ProviderFeedback mailbox is to gather feedback from providers regarding the posted frequently asked questions (FAQS). Feedback received in this mailbox helps CMS staff to evaluate and update FAQs. Inquiries/questions are not answered from the ProviderFeedback mailbox, but are disseminated to the CMS subject matter experts (SMEs) to respond. The CMM Inquiries staff can better assist you in getting responses. Please send your inquiries/questions to CMMInquiry@cms.hhs.gov Thank you.”
Of course, I posted the question to the only place I could find on the CMS site. This Medicare stuff certainly will be fun. 😉